‘Headliner: NoviNews’ Shapes the World With the News Articles You Approve

In Headliner: NoviNews, you take on the lead role at the NoviNews paper station – the person in charge of what gets printed and what articles get rejected.

This is a huge task. Each day you are given a variety of articles in various different categories. Some are more politically-charged, while others are fluffer articles based on cultural trends. You can deny or approve any number of these articles, and whatever you approve will be printed for the world to read. If you ignore a specific opinion or deny it in the past, you will need to stick to that so as to not send out mixed signals in your paper. Your boss wants consistency.

The town around you isn’t in the best shape, either – a new sickness has been breaking out, small business are struggling, and immigrants are having trouble living their lives. Every night after work, you must walk through this busy city, listening to people around you and interacting with some of them personally.

Through overheard conversations, you can see how your approved news travels – who is talking about what, and what their opinions are on each thing. You can also talk to some more key characters who express their own thoughts and lives. This town is very much set in the future, too, with drones traveling around to help people, humans being mutated to be better fit, and food being genetically altered in various ways.

With all of this experimentation, there are a lot of different issues and opinions around everything. You can queue these views and help select individuals, but it will be all up to your day job. You yourself don’t seem to be in the best place, either. And how could you be, with the world around you being so negative? At least you get a decent wage as the Headliner.

Headliner: NoviNews is a highly-political game that really shows how the news can affect the world around you. With this much power and control, as well as all of the articles you can deny or approve personally, you will probably end up with a very unique ending to your own story.

Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist, writing for Metro UK, Big Boss Battle, AlphaBetaGamer, and many more, all with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, judges many jams and events. Jupiter is also the Adept Games Wizard at Armor Games where she finds free-to-play, browser-based games to bring on board to their web portal.